Hamburg

Hamburg is such Amsterdam in which instead of old and crooked houses on canals there are standing new and modern ones. All in all there are less canals but as says Wikipedia there are more bridges!

Cuisine here is just awesome! Instead of typical for Germany heavy and fatty food in Hamburg they serve delicious fresh fish.

There is also a very impressive city hall and a lot of places for beautiful pictures.

From the gallery: professional images of German cities

Three panoramas of Erfurt

My mission:  capture the night cityscape on three different levels while the sky will still have blue color.

Descending form the hill to the square I tried to manage my little twilight time that way so I will win both in quality and in quantity. I was calmly making several panorama shots and then several more as reserves, then checked sharpness on preview and after that grabbed all my stuff and ran as fast as I could down the hill until the next stopping point for a picture. And that way combining slow and fast I’ve managed to make all the I had planned. And I think that my mission is accomplished.

From the gallery: professional images of German cities

Ulm

There is a city in Germany situated right on the border between Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The border is the Danube river and it splits the city into old and new (Ulm and Neu Ulm). The most interesting part is of course the old one and it has on it’s territory the highest cathedral in Germany (and in the world!) – Ulm Minster (Ulmer Münster). There is also a busy main street, several beautiful canals and some cute houses.

From the side of New Ulm you can enjoy the view of the old town. Walk down the river is pleasant and quiet.

Ulm is one of my favorite cities. I have already written about it but I would like to add more details. I come to Ulm when I want to calmly enjoy the riverside, go to some cute restaurant in an old German house, eat something tasty and take pictures at night…

Series: beautiful pictures of Germany

 

Stuttgart

This city is called boring, industrial, unattractive. Tourists come here rarely and travelers try to pass Stuttgart by. But I love this city. My most bright and warm feeling are connected with it.

I got a goal to capture the beauty of Stuttgart on my pictures, find some specially interesting angles, wait for particularly good light. And during several weeks I was persistently exploring different corners of the city looking for photos. And here is the result:

Stuttgart is a unique city. From all sides it is surrounded by hills. It’s houses are situated both in the valley and  on the slopes of hills. Streets are branching out up and down. The hills are very nice places for strolling, riding a bike or walking with a camera in searches for good views. Houses are beautiful everywhere no matter if they are downtown or in the suburbs. Everywhere where you cast a glance it will be pleased with nice looks. Another thing – is to find something interesting, special. For that you need to pass through many streets and take a look at hundreds of different views.

The main landmarks of Stuttgart are: Old an New castles (Altes Schloss and Neues Schloss), there is also a beautiful church (Johanniskirche) on the lake (Feuersee), TV tower from which you can imagine yourself flying over the city, Mercedes and Porsche museums and a couple of cathedrals. There are very few tourists and that feels nice when staying here long. There are a lot of forests, parks, plants all  around. All in all Stuttgart is a big but quite a cozy city.

And there are also a lot of rainbows in Stuttgart! I have already written about German rainbows here: Germany, the country of rainbows. It is possible to take pictures without even leaving the house and run fast to the window as soon as sun comes after rain.

Pictures of different German cities

Panoramas of Nuremberg

It’s interesting: when I take pictures of a city at the daytime and then at night I normally choose different compositions because light and illumination are so different. But sometimes I shoot a variety of pictures from all kinds of angles but at the final stage of processing I choose almost exactly the same composition both for day and night. The pictures anyway look different so I stay happy.

Night panorama of beautiful Nuremberg

Day panorama of beautiful Nuremberg

Germany, the country of rainbows.

I have never seen as many rainbows as I have seen in Germany! I think it is the combination of rainy weather, sun showing up from time to time and the pure air that gives that effect. Sometimes I can see 5 rainbows during a week in different days. And I don’t even need to do any effort. Sometimes I just need to look out of the window. Also rainbows like to meet me on a road and then it’s very important to react fast and find a good place to stop. But possibilities to stop on highways are limited so often I have to take pictures right through the windshield.

When it starts to rain my attentiveness and keenness of observation become stronger and I start to watch the potential place where a rainbow can show up. In contrast to the locals I like German rains. Because I know what I can find after they stop.

At first when I saw such a bright event as a rainbow I got so excited that my hands started to shake and I was randomly pushing buttons on my camera to try to capture that wonderful image as soon as possible. But now when I see those colorful stripes at the horizon I try to carefully consider the right composition, find the best angle, move fast in different directions watching the rainbow becoming more bight or less. I pick interesting surroundings from houses or plants to give a professional look to a picture, not just “here is a rainbow”. In general I try to capture the most artistic landscape during the short period of time when a rainbow is visible.

After the wonderful rainbow summer last year I decided to make a collection of rainbows from different countries. Bright and faint, full and partial, urban and natural – any type of rainbow made me delighted and with my ability to turn the observed landscape to an artistic photo were successfully added to my collection.

The end of fall, winter and long journeys to snowy Moscow stopped the inflow of new rainbow images. But with the beginning of spring and returning to Germany colorful shining outside the window  reminded me again of my collection and started to widen it. Of course most of my rainbows are German but I slowly start to add other countries too. But actually I doubt that any other country can catch up with so wonderful rainbow conditions of Germany.

My collection can be viewed here: rainbows of the world

Frankfurt am Main. Coming back again and again.

It is difficult to count how many times I was there. Landing and taking off I was coming back again and again. On my way to the cities of Germany, Austria, Spain, America… there was very often an intermediate stop – Frankfurt. It was not really possible for me to spend as much time in the city as much I was spending it at it’s airport. I was often leaving for another German city right from the airport or another airplane was taking me to another country without letting me even leave the terminal. But actually there was time when I managed to spend a couple of hours before taking off or after landing walking downtown Frankfurt. And from those scrappy memories and photos I formed a little collection.

My first acquaintance with the city happened after my first express-trip to Germany, when after seeing it’s several different cities I wanted at last to look at Frankfurt. I heard of it as of the city of skyscrapers. At that time I had never seen skyscrapers before and I was absolutely impressed by them.  Such an interesting feeling, when my glance together with the building walls was going far away up, all the way into the clouds… I was feeling dizzy from the height surrounding me. After the first publication of me picture I received a comment: “Not a bad preparation for a trip to the USA. It is said that there is even more high.” I couldn’t even think at that time that the expression “it is said” will turn to me to “I have seen”. But that has happened. I have bee to the USA, and not once. Yes, there it’s really higher.

After some time  I had again an opportunity to walk downtown Frankfurt before my departure to Moscow. I had more free time than before and besides the skyscrapers I visited other places of interest: the Römer with it’s charming houses, cathedrals, bridges and the embankment of Main river. The weather at that day was not good, it was a typical German gray day. So I made very few good pictures. Those that I liked were made from the roof of a skyscraper. Because of the absence of interesting colors I transferred most of them to black and white.

After some more time passed I got an opportunity to spend in Frankfurt the whole night! That was because my flight to Russia was scheduled to very early time next morning. In spite of a gray sky during the whole day me and my camera were happy to take pictures of Frankfurt at night when the city was full of lights and the sky had a beautiful dark blue color. All the photos were made form the embankment of Main river, already my favorite place in Frankfurt.

When I woke up at 6 am, I added some more pictures to my collection. I took them right our of my hotel room. Our tiny balcony had a fantastic view over the city. The lights weer still on and I was able to get my favorite night images in the morning.

I really like Frankfurt. And I am dreaming to spend more time in that city and of course add more pictures to my collection.

Other photos of Germany are available on my site: German cityscapes

Würzburg. In my opinion the most beautiful city in Germany.

The first time I was there in summer 2006 during my trip from Frankfurt airport to Austrian city Linz. That was the time when I had different camera and different eyes. After a couple of regular snapshots I left. And came back in 4 years with good experience both in travel and photography. And just when I stepped out of the train and started my way through the city streets to the Main Square and Old Bridge I exclaimed: “What a beautiful city!”

Fantastically beautiful. Looking around I could see a lot of spires growing out of the city. At every square meter I ran across some magnificent building. On the other side of the river stood a cool fortress. And the day was warm and sunny.

And the most pleasant thing was that there were a lot of trails on the hill. And I could walk through the vineyards all the way to the fortress and enjoy beautiful views of the city that turned to me at different interesting angles form each step I made.

Wurzburg is a wonderful city. I want to come back. Here are more pictures of Germany.